Professional Younger Brother
by nkwrites
Summary: The Chantry lies in ruins, and death is in the streets. Carver reflects on his... less than perfect relationship with his oldest sister as he and the templars gather to face the mage resistance.


Professional Younger Brother

Author: nkwrites

Summary: The Chantry lies in ruins, and death is in the streets. Carver reflects on his... less than perfect relationship with his oldest sister as he and the templars gather to face the mage resistance.

Genre: Angst/ Family

A/N: This is a rewrite of my previous fic of the same title. Will probably be fleshing out those flashbacks in other fics, because as you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of sibling angst. (_Cough_Winchesters_cough_.) If you have something you think I should write about, or that you really want to see, please do let me know! Im ever so happy to oblige. Enjoy!

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Carver Hawke ran up the staircase in the Gallows courtyard, doing his best to keep pace with Knight Captain Cullen and Knight Commander Meredith. Having gathered the rest of their forces, the Knight Commander urged them on; eager it seemed, to finally put an end to the catastrophe that the healer abomination had caused.

That his sister had allowed.

He spared a glance at his fellow Templars, searched the faces of the few who had chosen to discard, or had lost their helms during the battle. Some looked weary, others determined, eyes hard. Most however, looked scared. He averted his gaze, and concentrated on running. The rain fell hard and heavy around them, the drops pinging off silverite as they ran.

He wiped the water away from his eyes and soldiered on.

_Six years. _Six years he had donned his armour with Andraste's flaming sword emblazoned on the chest piece. In six hears he had risen through the ranks, from fresh-faced recruit to Ser Carver, poised to take over as the next Knight Captain. Though he suspected that any recent favour shown to him by Meredith had none to do with him, and all to do with her attempt to understand the motives of the dagger in her side that was Malina Hawke.

_Once again sister, I stand dwarfed by your shadow. _

The group of Templars had reached the Gallows courtyard. First Enchanter Orsino was absent, as was the mage force that they had all come to expect. Instead, in the centre of the Maker-forsaken compound, Malina Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall stood defiant. His sister's grip was tight around their father's obsidian stave. The warstaff's black dragonhead seemed to absorb the light, slick as it was with rainwater. Malina's gaze was hard as they approached; the ice blue eyes and dark hair that marked her Amell lineage lending her face a cold harshness that would put the Frostback Mountains to shame.

The group of rogues and reprobates that they'd gathered together, that she alone led, stood silently behind her, support unwavering. Mal's abomination lover stood to her right, a faint blue light emanating from his clenched palms, his face more drawn and haggard than Carver had ever seen it. The pirate wench, her infuriating dwarf storyteller, the Dalish bloodmage. To his sister's left, Aveline held her Templar shield at the ready, a fire in her green eyes. The Tevinter experiment, newly returned to her side; tattoos a blaze of silver and a feral snarl on his face.

There were two others he did not recognise, a tall guardsman with hair the colour of mud, and a blonde elf in strange armour and wicked daggers in his hands. More stragglers, Carver guessed, misled and waylaid like moths to Malina's ever-bright flame. Her unpredictable sense of what was right and wrong, her almost arrogant self-confidence.

_It will never amaze me sister, how you manage to inspire such loyalty. _

Misplaced or otherwise, that loyalty would matter little now. The Templar force was legion, and the mage insurgence appeared to have lost its will, its fire, if all that stood between his Brothers and the Circle was the nine of them. It was over.

_All over, Malina_.

He could feel it in his bones. This would be the moment that she would finally realise that she was not her legend. That she can be, _is _beaten, and accept the Knight Commander's terms of surrender. Meredith's mercy.

The Maker's mercy.

She will be taken as their prisoner, as will her friends, if not for their own crimes, then for shielding the mage extremist that dared lay a tainted hand on the Chantry. He allowed the smallest sigh of relief to escape his lips.

_I will not have to fight her after all. _

But it was not to be, for the Maker can be a cruel master, unknown in his ways. Carver watched in horror, incredulous as Meredith sentenced the Champion to death by execution. Everything fell apart then, as the Knight-Captain told her she has gone too far, as Meredith whirled around – accusing him of bloodmagic's taint, blood red sword glowing with the power of lyrium. A few gasps escape parted lips around him, as his Brothers and Sisters watch Cullen abandon their Commander, and moved to stand by Malina, his expression grim. Anders is surprised, and distrusting; the mage edging ever closer to his beloved. Mal however, merely nods in gratitude and moved to put herself between Meredith and her friends, the family that displaced him. His sister slammed her staff into the ground, wordless, her stance issuing her silent challenge. He'd seen that face enough times when they'd sparred as teenagers, right before she'd sweep his legs out from under him and drop him into the mud like the gawky adolescent he was – all gangly limbs and no grace.

'_Even without magic, Carver? Hah!'_

She had turned to face him then – her expression didn't soften, _when did it ever, _but her eyes were pleading, willing him to follow Cullen.

Before she was forced to do what she had to do.

Time seemed to slow around him, sounds dulling, memories fighting within his mind – each demanding his attention.

He sees himself, barely past his tenth year, practicing with a wooden sword in the hopes that he would catch his father's attention, earn his father's praise. Carver was not unloved, but Malcom Hawke had never spent much time with his son, the man always seemed to prefer to educate his daughters in the ways of the arcane. He saw his father swell with pride as Bethany studied herb lore and Malina lighted candles with a thought. _Malina. _Father had loved her so. He gave her everything – his love, his staff, his nickname. Oh Mal, Carver recalled, jealousy tainting his memories. Father's firstborn. His precious, magical heir.

He remembers Malina shouldering the blame for the burnt down barn when they have to move, sparing young Bethany from their father's disapproval.

He sees the night their father died. _Had she cried? _Carver remembered no tears, just the image of his sister crumpling after she could shout and rage no more, her expression weary beyond her eighteen years as she slumped by Father's bed. They had attempted healing, his sisters, but even combined with all the poultices and potions they could afford from the nearby Lothering market they could not defeat the disease. Bethany just wasn't skilled enough beyond healing minor wounds and inflammations, and Malina… Mal had, as she bitterly put it, a 'gross ineptitude for anything that didn't involve destruction and death'.

'_I'm a battlemage father_,' he hears her announce, sees her eyes turn into blue silverite as she faces their father, fourteen years old. '_So fierce that Tevinter will fear my name_.'

He stands by her as Mother cradled Bethany, dead in her arms.

He sees his sister smirk as they walked through the Hightown Market. '_You sure you didn't inherit any magic from father, Carver?_' she had asked, looking back as she cocked an eyebrow so that it disappeared under her messy crop of black hair. Her bright cerulean eyes twinkled with mischief as she grinned at him. '_Because, by the Maker, I could sworn you've got smoke coming out of your ears there, brother_.' Oh how she loved to mock him. '_Fireballs are meant to turn Darkspawn to ash Carver, not your brain_.'

He watches her save the mage boy, and slay dragons in the Bone Pit.

He sees her cave into mother's pleas to leave him behind, grounding him in Kirkwall while she goes into the Deep Roads with the slave and that thrice-blighted healer in his place, on their expedition. The Fade held no fury greater than his, no Rage to dwarf his when he realised that it would once again be Mal, self-appointed head of the family who would save them, whose name would be on everyone's lips while he remained a scrawl in the margin of Varric's stories.

Mal, once again, most loved.

He sees her standing over the dead Arishok and watches, envy smothering relief in his heart as people call her Champion and shout her name to the heavens. He did not congratulate her.

He looked at her as she stood before him in the present, bruised, battered and bleeding, and saw concern where he once saw contempt, dignity where he once imagined arrogance, a sister where once they only stood a competitor – a hurdle in the race of his life, a dragon in his quest for his family's love. He sees now, that the privilege of kicking her in her Champion-armour-clad-behind was a privilege that was most certainly his, and his alone.

'No,' he finally croaks, as Meredith turned her wrathful, lyrium-crazed eyes on him. 'I will not fight my sister for you.' He held his head high and walked over, positioning himself between Aveline and his sister.

_We started together, we will finish this together._

Malina gave him a strange look, one that he is not yet willing to return. It was too full of understanding he did not deserve, forgiveness that he had not yet earned. Love that he had tried so valiantly to ignore. Instead he raised his chin ever so slightly and addressed the Knight Commander in a voice that is he hoped was more steady than his shaking knees.

'If you want my sister, you'll have to kill me first.'

As Cullen seconds this, and assent is voiced though their ranks, be they but few, Carver spared a look at his sister. Her lips were upturned in one of those frustratingly knowing smiles she seemed to favour. He shrugged. 'Looks like we're cleaning up another of your bloody messes eh, Mal? Can't blame it on me this time. No one in all of Thedas is going to believe you.'

The smile becomes a grin, her pronounced canines lending a wolfish quality to the expression. He'd missed that look. 'Not that I'm not grateful for the help Carver, but you're cutting it a little close here, brother dearest. Why the change of heart?'

Now it's his turn to grin, and he looks past her to regard the dwarf by her side, an old memory rising unbidden.

'Let's just say that I'm now what one would call… a professional younger brother.'

_Fin_.


End file.
